The Catacombs of Lima, the impressive underground cemetery beneath Peru’s capital that houses the remains of thousands of people (and why its boundaries aren’t known)

Professor Cayetano Villavicencio moves freely among the piles of femurs and skulls that contain these dark galleries. He has devoted himself to its study and preservation for years and cannot hide a certain passion.

“Look, some thighs are extraordinarily large,” he tells the visitor.

We are in the catacombs of the Monastery of San Francisco de Asís, in the heart of Lima. The crypts excavated beneath this symbolic temple of the Peruvian capital hold the remains of thousands of people buried during the several centuries of Spanish rule.

“It is the underground cemetery of Latin America”, says Professor Villavicencio proudly. The message is echoed by the Peruvian government’s tourism promotion web pages.

The monastery is a treasure trove of Baroque art from the colonial era, built in 1535, when the Franciscans and other religious orders began their settlement in America at the hands of the Spanish crown, but what usually fascinates tourists most are the skulls, femurs, collarbones, etc., which the visitor receives carefully aligned in what was once a burial ground.

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“The most common are skulls and femurs because they are the bones that last the longest”, explains Villavicencio, but there is also a sternum, coccyx fragments and other bone remains.

No one knows exactly how many people are buried here. The most common estimates say it was at least 25,000, though Villavicencio calculates it could have been more than 100,000.

“We know that in the monastery there are many corridors and galleries with tombs that have not yet been excavated,” he says.

In reality, this was not the only religious center where burials were performed in the stadtholder era, as evidenced by the remains found in other churches.

The experts suspect that under the bustle of traffic in the epicenter of the Peruvian capital hides an immense necropolis to discover.

As archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen, from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, told BBC Mundo, “only 30% or 40% has been excavated, but we are talking about a continuity of tunnels stretching across the lower part of the historic center of Lima.”

No one knows for sure how far these tunnels go, but according to local legends, they reach the bowels of the government palace or beyond. even to the port of El Callao.

What do we know about the Catacombs of Lima?

The crypts of the San Francisco Convent are most impressive because of the sheer number of remains and because they have been on public display since their rediscovery in the late 1940s.

It is a labyrinth of bone-filled galleries that can give the most apprehensive of visitors the chills.

“We had to signpost the route very well because a tourist got lost and got scared,” says Villavicencio.

But mass burials have been found in other churches in Lima, such as those of San Lázaro, Santa Ana and the Santísimo Corazón de Jesús, popularly known as the Church of the Orphans. Numerous remains of buried children were found in the latter.

Van Dalen explains that “these are funerary structures associated with churches, convents and convents, where in colonial times all the population living in and around Lima was buried.”

“In the beginning they were only used for the burial of religious, but over the years due to the various epidemics and earthquakes that hit the city civil funerals started there.”

Added to this was the widespread belief at the time that burying oneself under a temple facilitated nearness to God and, consequently, salvation of the soul.

“They believed they were closer to God by being near the altar,” explains Villavicencio, who has researched the social background and the way those buried in the catacombs of the San Francisco Convent were buried.

who are buried here

“Spaniards, Creoles, Indians and blacks were buried here. There were no exclusions, despite the social hierarchy prevailing at the time. It used to be members of a few brotherhoods who were installed in the side altars of the church,” says Villavicencio.

At that time, the fraternities or brotherhoods were very numerous and one of the most widespread forms of social grouping.

Most of the remains have not been identified. It is not known whose they are. But not all were anonymous people. There are also prominent figures of the time, such as García Sarmiento de Sotomayor, Viceroy of Peru between 1648 and 1655.

They used to stand next to each other without a box, separated only by a mound of earth that covered them. When a row of corpses was finished, another was started to go on top, and so on.

The crypts were bricked up in the 19th century. When in 1949 the Franciscan friars of the monastery decided to open them to see what they looked like, they found a large number of bones scattered on the ground.

It wasn’t long before the find caught the attention of the local media and sparked the public’s imagination, and eventually the space was transformed into a museum that can be visited.

When was burial in the catacombs of Lima stopped?

On July 28, 1821, Argentine General José de San Martín proclaimed Peru’s independence in the Plaza Mayor of Lima.

Concerned about the lack of sanitation in the city, San Martín, who had become protector of the newly independent Peru, he banned underground burials in churches.

Earlier, some religious had expressed concern about the persistence of a practice that endangered not only public health, but perhaps also the stability of the buildings.

In 1808, the General Cemetery of Lima, today known as the Presbítero Maestro Cemetery, was inaugurated, but locals were hesitant to let this new space be their place of eternal rest. and the practice of burying oneself in churches persisted for some years.

But over time it was gradually abandoned. The huge cemetery of the San Francisco Convent was boarded up and abandoned, but its existence remained in the memory of the Franciscan community.

How to find out more about the Catacombs of Lima

Only the work of archaeologists and historians can clear up the unknown about how extensive this burial network was which lies below one of the liveliest capitals in Latin America.

Professor Villavicencio recalls that there is documented evidence that the plaza next to the Convent and Basilica of San Francisco was a cemetery in colonial times, and all indications are that the burial vaults were connected to it.

“Joint work is needed with the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation on the ground,” he claims.

Van Dalen points out that “research in these areas has focused on tourism. It is more complicated to open up and appreciate more remote areas, where we have to deal with potential safety problems, landslides and oxygen deprivation.”

For the researcher, one of the problems is the lack of resources. “In Peru, pre-Hispanic archeology faces many budget constraints; imagine what the situation is with colonial archaeology, which receives much less attention.”